Is Television The Thief of Time and Happiness?

Submitted by tonyplant on January 2, 2006 - 17:12.

For most of my life I have practised happiness less than I’ve practised the piano, and the piano averages out at around three minutes per week. Like most of us, I know the activities that make a significant contribution to both my immediate and longer-term happiness, but I used to think that it was frivolous/selfish to devote any time or resources to them. I have, of course, never applied this sort of critical thinking to the time I used to spend watching television. I’m sure there’s some vague provision in the Magna Carta that establishes a man’s right to veg out in front of the TV while normal household chaos rages around him.

 

When I was growing up, there were programmes that gamely exhorted us to adopt more creative behaviours. Indeed, one show in the series Why Don’t You Turn Off Your Television Set and Do Something Less Boring? featured my brother and his friends swinging on branches round a local pond (you made your own entertainment in those days). But those were cosy admonitions that didn’t threaten us with cognitive dissolution or the wrecking of our health. However, a recurrent theme in the BBC’s recent Honey, We’re Killing the Kids is that notwithstanding the debate over the impact of advertising on children, excessive T.V. watching is a remarkable power for harm. And there seems to be a proliferation of websites full of jeremiads against television watching and its impact on our lives: sites like Turn Off Your T.V. and Limit T.V..

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